Russ Lemmon: Prospective jurors don't do it for the pay

At 2:40 p.m. Monday, Bobby Guttridge stepped to the podium and told the 50 prospective jurors in County Administrator Joe Baird's DUI trial something they were learning first-hand.

In real time.

"Jury selection is the most difficult part of a trial," said Guttridge, who is Baird's attorney.

What a long day they endured. They started at 8 a.m. and finished shortly before 6:30 p.m.

All for $15.

Take away the lunch break, and they made $1.67 per hour, based on nine hours they were "on the job." (Note: They will receive the $15 only if their employer doesn't pay them for their time off.)

"I'm so tired, I don't know if I'm going in the right room," one juror said aloud after returning from the lunch break about 1:30 p.m.

Jurors would spend another five hours waiting for the six-person panel, along with one alternate, to be selected.

The chosen ones: Five women and two men.

The prospective jurors were from every walk of life.

There were two chefs, a bank employee, a school bus driver, a stock clerk, a nurse, an office administrator, a club manager and employees of Indian River State College, the University of Florida and the state Department of Corrections.

There was even a county employee — the hierarchy of which Baird oversees.

Indian River County Judge David Morgan profusely thanked the prospective jurors for the time they spent Monday sitting in the courtroom.

"Jury service is an obligation of citizenship," he told the assembled group about 4:30 p.m.

If body language, such as arms being crossed, mean anything, they were frustrated by the slow proceedings. However, they were calm and extraordinarily respectful throughout the process.

I gotta tell you, that was refreshing to see.

They respected the process and knew what an important role they were playing in our legal system.

From my perspective, the only surprise of the day — a very pleasant surprise, I might add — was how Guttridge effectively struck out in claiming the pre-trial publicity tainted the jury pool.

That wasn't the case at all, as only 13 of the prospective jurors — or 26 percent — claimed to have prior knowledge of Baird's legal situation.